CHICAGO — Here's what we're reading today.
Barbie Now Remembers Stuff Your Child Says: Smartphones can already talk back to us, so it was probably just a matter of time before children’s toys joined the artificial intelligence fray. Reporter Alisa Hauser was a bit weirded out by a New York Times story featuring “Hello Barbie,” a new Mattel Barbie that can remember a child’s responses, calling them back as conversation starters days or weeks later, a trait that writer James Vlahos describes as the doll’s "most unnerving power." And while one psychologist who studies the imaginative play of children worries that a conversational doll might prevent children, who have long personified toys without technology, from imagining wildly enough, another expert is concerned about a ‘‘domination model’’ relationship between a child and its Hello Barbie that could be "unhealthy for moral and emotional development."
If You Thought Rent Was Bad Today ...: It's no surprise to renting Chicagoans that the monthly check can really hurt. And while the economy is just starting to climb out of its hole after a long, long winter of recession, reporter Ariel Cheung is reading that the future for renters remains bleak. The Atlantic cites a study estimating that 13 million people will spend more than half their salaries on rent by 2025 — an 11 percent increase over the next decade. For that we can thank fewer Millennials buying homes, an affordable housing shortage likely to worsen and a massive population of Baby Boomers struggling to cope with financial limitations.
Chicago's Unique Housing Makeup: Chicago has the greatest percentage of three- or four-unit as well as five- to nine-unit housing structures in America. In a post titled "The way we live, city by city," The Washington Post takes a look at the housing makeups of the 40 largest cities in America by population. Chicago has the seventh-least percentage of single unit, single-family homes. New York, expectedly, has the greatest percent of building types with 20 or more units, at just under 50 percent.
Two Big (and Jewish) China Boosters Skip President's Xi Jinping's Dinner: Despite an offered compromise (a rabbi prepared to conduct religious services in a nearby ballroom) two big supporters of China in the business world, Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, and Maurice R. Greenberg, the former chief executive of the American International Group, say they won't be attending a dinner for business executives who are paying up to $30,000 a table to listen to China's president, Xi Jinping, deliver a speech in Seattle, the New York Times reports. Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish New Year — where observant Jews will work on atoning for their sins over the past year and try to wipe the slate clean for Year 5775 — kicks off at sundown Tuesday.
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